“Fucking cunt,” he whispered. He picked up his coffee. The mug trembled. His hand was shaking.
Then Stenzel slid into the chair just vacated by Abby. “She’s a pistol, huh?” he said in his chipper, ingratiating voice.
“She’s a piece of shit,” Reynolds growled. “She wouldn’t give me a fucking thing.”
“That’s not quite true.” Stenzel tapped the receiver in his ear and smiled. “She revealed more than she intended.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that this woman has an Orange County map book and a schedule of your appearances.”
“That doesn’t tell us anything.”
“Maybe it does. We need to be proactive, Jack. We need to think outside the box.”
Reynolds honestly detested the middle management jargon Stenzel was always spouting. “So go ahead. Tell me what I missed.”
“It’s not a question of missing anything. It’s more like revisiting the issue from a different analysis standpoint. The woman had a schedule. Where did she get it?”
“She could have picked it up at my campaign office.”
“Yes… or she could have had it sent to her.”
Reynolds stared into the black depths of his coffee. He began to see where Stenzel was going. “She could be on our mailing list.”
“It’s quite possible.”
“But she has a new name. She could be anybody.”
“She could be anybody with an Orange County map book. And who is most likely to use a map book to get around in your district?” Stenzel answered his own question. “Someone who’s from outside the district.”
“Right,” Reynolds said, getting it now.
“Ballpark, I’m estimating ninety-nine percent of the people on your mailing list are your constituents.”
“So we look for someone who isn’t.”
“That’s the game plan.”
“And if there’s more than one?”
“We look for women only. That reduces the parameters by half.”
“She could be married. Signed up under her husband’s name.”
“Your security consultant said the lady is violent and paranoid. Doesn’t sound like marriage material to me.”
“Okay.” Reynolds was feeling slow all of a sudden. He should’ve put this together. He shouldn’t have to rely on a simpering toady like Kip Stenzel to make the connections. “What if there’s more than one woman from outside the district who’s on our list?”
“Then we check them out one by one. We look for the one whose credit history goes back only eight years.”
“You can do that?”
“It’s a challenge, but definitely actionable. And the mailing list isn’t that big. I’m not promising a quick win, but you never know. We may get lucky right away.”
“Start on it,” Reynolds said. “Go back to the office and start checking the list. When you find this woman, call me on my cell.”
Stenzel got up. He fished a key ring out of his pocket. “I assume you’re keeping the Ford.”
Reynolds nodded and took the keys. “You can rent a car. Just ask the front desk. Get moving.” He didn’t thank Stenzel for his help. Thanks would come later, if his idea panned out.
“Will do.” Stenzel hesitated a moment. “Sinclair’s disloyalty makes things more complicated.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know why you had to outsource. I could have handled it. Just give me my marching orders, and I would have operationalized any strategy you called for.”
Any strategy? Reynolds doubted it. There were some skills that weren’t taught in business school.
“Get going, Kip,” he said mildly. “Get on the case. Find me a solution.”
“That’s what I do, Jack.”
He walked away, and Reynolds was left to sip his coffee, which was getting cold, and to ponder Abby Sinclair. Stenzel was right. She could be a problem. But problems could be taken care of.
He’d hired a freelancer for a reason. Sinclair flew solo. No organization, no staff, nobody keeping tabs on her. She worked outside the law-no records to worry about. If she disappeared, no one would ever know what case she’d been handling or who she’d been working for.
Probably it wouldn’t come to that. But he almost hoped it would.
10
Abby liked making a dramatic exit, but that didn’t mean she actually had to leave. Sometimes it was smarter to hang around, especially when something interesting appeared to be on tap.
Sitting with Reynolds, she’d noticed his gaze move once too often to a spot across the room. On her way out she had glanced over, and what do you know, there was Kip Stenzel. Interesting that he would be here; more interesting that Reynolds evidently hadn’t wanted her to know it.
Curious, she waited outside the rendezvous court, studying a painting and watching Reynolds at his table in the reflection on the glass. Sure enough, he was joined almost immediately by Stenzel. The two of them remained deep in conversation for several minutes before Reynolds dismissed him.
Abby ducked out of the sight as Stenzel walked through the doorway. Following at a distance, she passed behind him while he spoke with a clerk at the desk. She picked up enough of their exchange to know that Stenzel was inquiring about a car rental.
Presumably Reynolds and his campaign manager had come to the Brayton together. Now Stenzel was going off on his own in a rented car. Reynolds must have other travel plans.
She couldn’t follow them both. The congressman interested her more. With any luck he had used the same Ford minivan he’d driven to the town hall meeting last night.
She took the elevator to the hotel’s underground garage and wandered among the parked vehicles until she found the van, easily identifiable by the two REELECT JACK REYNOLDS bumper stickers on its rump. From her purse she took out a roll of reflective tape and tore off a six-inch strip, which she attached to the bumper. In the dim light of the garage, the tape was invisible, but outside, in direct sunlight, it would throw off considerable glare. She would be able to stay well back and still see the telltale shine.
Reynolds had said he was going to lunch at noon. He ought to be through by one thirty or so. Then she would see where he went.
Tailing a client wasn’t exactly standard procedure. But then, Reynolds wasn’t her client anymore. In fact, inasmuch as he refused to reimburse her for her services, he had never really been her client at all.
“Should’ve paid me, Jack,” she whispered.
By two o’clock she was starting to wonder how long it took Reynolds to chow down. She’d been sitting in her Miata, parked across the street from the hotel garage, for more than an hour.
Finally the Ford came into view, heading up the exit ramp. She keyed the ignition. When the van breezed past, she followed. Reynolds headed onto the southbound Harbor Freeway, the 110.
The tail job was easy. Reynolds, unlike most of the people she had surveilled, wasn’t paranoid. He executed no evasive maneuvers. He signaled when changing lanes, only moderately exceeded the speed limit, and gave her plenty of warning when transferring from the 110 to the 10, and from the 10 to the 405.
He was headed back to Orange County, it appeared. Going to his office or his home. Stenzel might have had a more suspicious destination in mind. She was beginning to think she’d followed the wrong man.
Just past the Huntington Beach exit, Reynolds’ cell phone chirped.
“Yeah,” he said, cradling the phone between his head and shoulder.
“We got her.” Stenzel’s voice was excited, higher than usual.
“You sure?”
“She’s on the mailing list. She lives in San Fernando, fifty miles outside our district. And her paper trail only goes back eight years. What’s the protocol for me now?”
“Nothing. I’ll handle it from here. Just give me her address.”
“903 Keystone Drive.”
Reynolds nodded, committing the address to memory. “I’ll be a little late getting back to the office,” he said. “Need to see some people. Do I have anything on for this afternoon?”